Opening Ceremony 2010 World Championships

Hi all,

I am writing the whole update, because Brittany brought the Blundetto Girl's up for a nail painting party. Red, white and blue nail polish are the colors of the day.

A couple more of our competitors arrived at our hotel today. We have the Japanese team and the Canadian team. The Canadians will only be competing at the master level but they brought our favorite Canadians Denny and Kris. For those of you who don't know or have forgotten, Denny and Kris are the couple who put us up in Canada. We gave them hugs and got to talk with them for a while. They were in China earlier this year and they told us about that, they told us about their National team and all about their trip here. It was really great seeing them here.

Tonight we had the Opening Ceremony. It started with all of the teams walking into the stands, this was a very happy event a lot of the competitors being very familiar with each other. A lot of the veteran competitors knew one another, and exchanged pleasantries and took some pictures together. Brittany and I had a blast seeing all of the competition, what they are doing, and the different cultures.

We got to take pictures at the centerpiece of all of the dragon boats with their heads attached and spot light (so cool). When everyone was in the stands all of the nations started with their cheers. The Swiss and Iranians had some good ones, but one of our teammates Tim successfully led the Americans to the best chant of all (The Roller Coaster). With all of the laughing and cheering complete the ceremonies got under way. All 16 nations were announced and their flags were brought across the stage. Then the drum crew played a great couple of drum songs and the ICF President was introduced. He gave a rousing opening speech and declared for the first time that the 2011 ICF Canoe and Kayak championships will also be held in Szeged.

There was then a singer who was mediocre and then the Mayor of Szeged came on and opened the Championships. He introduced the dancers next and a group of professional dancers came on stage and did a new original dance for us. They were great dancers and both the men and women were Hot (Brittany happily pointed out to me "see popped collars look good"). Then came Brittany's favorite part, the little kid dancers. They were all very talented, young, and in time (with the music and each other).

The next part of the ceremony was a Dragon Boat coming from behind the Island in the middle of the course it was lit up by candles, and had a great opera singer on it. The guy sang beautifully and Brittany and I loved him. He then came on stage and finished his song.

The final part of the Opening Ceremony was of course fireworks. It was a 10 minute long presentation with a lot of good fire works (Brittany and I are both fascinated by loud noises and bright colors...). It was an incredibly cool presentation and really made the whole thing very real for both of us.

We have a 6:30AM bus to catch in the morning to the race course, this is very exciting and a little terrifying, please wish us luck as we win gold for the USA.

Love you all,
Brittany and Grant
PS Here is the site where you can watch the championships live:
http://www.kajakkenusport.hu/sarkanyhajovilagbajnoksag/stream

Final Practice before the Opening Ceremonies!

Hey all,

Well it was just your run of the mill average day here for the National Dragon Boat Team.

We woke up this morning and had another awesome breakfast. We got to the race course traveling with our new Iranian buddies.

We went out in a couple of different boating line ups, practice our starts and did timing drills. We came back in and had our lunch, then after lunch went out to catch our bus, the only problem is the bus left without the whole team. We had to wait another 2 hours for the next bus. When we finally got back to the hotel we had to show our credentials so that race judges could verify we were American citizens.

With that out of the way we went out on the town with a couple of our team mates. We had a lot of laughs and a good time. Brittany had the famous lemonade beer and I had the local hungarian beer. We're going out for ice cream and fun times now.

Talk to everyone tomorrow, it is opening ceremonies :)

Szeged Day 2

Hi all,

Last night was a very low key night. After the morning practice Brittany and I walked around the streets of Szeged exploring the town with two of our fellow team mates Franzi and hildren. Brittany and the girls got themselves iced coffees and an ice cream(I had a bite or maybe two of Brittany's!) it was a great flavor chocolate, caramel and hazelnut all in 1 ice cream scoop After that it was time for dinner with the team and relaxation. Dinner was fun we hung out with Bella, Coach Mike's littlest one for dinner and had her try everything but she only ended up liking the Chicken Noodle Soup...

We had our second practice this morning. The bus pulled up and yet again the Iranian team was on the bus. This time there was the Mens team at the front of the bus and a Womens team at the back of the bus. We moved ourselves on to the bus grabbing whatever free space there was mingling with our future competitors. Everyone woman Iranian loved the men on the team and even said "WOW, look at him (Grant)"! It made me smile and Grant as well! We got to the race coarse and it was time to get to work again, we loaded up in the 20 man and shoved off. After about 40 minutes of timing drills and starts we cleared off the water and let the masters team started their paddle. We all hung out in the team rallying area, discussing things from paddling technique to which woman in Szeged had the pinkest hair, because of the Paprika of course! A couple of the guys were hitting on the women from Iran(Let's see how that works out for them), and giving the Iranian men English pick up lines. Jimmy (for those who do not know Jimmy is a great friend, who actually got me into Dragon Boating) had about a 15 minute conversation with the men and got a picture with him and I and part of the mens team. Come the end of the masters practice we all met up and had a team meeting in the shade.

We ate lunch at the race coarse like we did yesterday. It is quite a thing to eat lunch at an Olympic race course every day of your trip. During lunch We met up with the Iranians again, the women and the men still seemed to be separated but on equal footing. While waiting in line for lunch I heard a loud commotion, as it turns out Jimmy was showing the Iranian men all of his card tricks. He then went on to show them 3 card Monty a game they all thoroughly enjoyed. Jimmy suggested that they bring money into the game, for which one of the elders quickly rebuked him. He then continued his games. An Iranian woman came over to see the game and Jimmy invited her with a high five, all of the men stood up and said no touch and the elder woman came in to rush her away. For all of this when Jimmy finally got his food he was greeted with a new nickname Ahma"Jimmy"dad.

Lunch was pork covered in some form of polenta or potato and cheese, and a poppyseed fig cherry bread. This is how we found the Hungarians plans to win, give us an opioid so we fail the ICF drug test and break the Iranians Halal diet so God will strike them down.

After returning home on our partially segregated bus, we decided that today we should go check out the Turkish bathes and relax for the whole afternoon. We arrived there with 8 of our teammates and one of their wives. The bath was fonded in 1896, and has been updated beautifully with modern therapeutic devices. We all started out in the eucalyptus steam room, then to the cold Mineral water. We then decided to try the Swedish spa which was turned up to 95 degrees centigrade(keep in mind water boils at 100). I then thought back about all of the ribs we had smoked at far lower temperatures and felt a little bad for them.

Then it was on to the mineral baths, this is where I must point out when you walk around with 8 american athletes on a national team we can be pretty loud and possibly off putting to the locals, so when we walked into the mineral baths there was a very very large angry looking Hungarian set up at one of the chess tables in the middle of the pool, yes you can play chess while soaking in mineral water. Jimmy (of Ahma"Jimmy"dad fame) sat directly across from him and returned his disgusted gaze. He then challenged the over sized man to an arm wrestling competition which immediately made him laugh!!! HAHAHAHAHA They then shook hands and he introduced himself as "Ivan" and Jimmy now calls him Ivan the Russian. We all then circled him as a team and he started to smile and laugh even more, he especially had eyes for the women on our team! We will enclose a picture of Ivan of course! :)

We have received quite a few questions from people about what the weather here is. Every day since Brittany and I have arrived it has been about 85 degrees and screaming blue sky's with no humidity. It goes down to about 60 at night, so the weather here has quite literally been perfect, and we are very excited and hoping for this weather come race days!

Szeged - First Day of Practice

Hello all from beautiful the streets of Szeged,

We made it to Szeged finally, and most of the senior team is here and getting to know each other very well. Last night we went for a night out in Szeged, it was their steak cookout and it was basically an American BBQ. It was a loud tent festival on the local river here. There were tents selling all sorts of different things ranging from a pretzel coated with cinnamon and sugar shaped like a curly fry and cooked on an open flame to light up hats to the cigarette stand. The whole team was walking through the festival and they had a ska rock band playing obscenely loud. We had a bit of fun there, and they even sung the theme to Cops...Bad Boys Bad Boys.

This morning is was down to business we woke up and had breakfast, Brittany loved the make your own cereal bar, I loved the eggs and meat. We then caught our bus to the race course. We got on the bus and there was another team already there, the Iranian team. Turns out that they were incredibly nice, they took some film of us asked us our names and asked to trade jerseys after the event. It was a senior mens only team, but they were extremely nice to all of the women on the bus, showing that they are incredibly progressive (These were the Iranians you never see on TV).

We drove about 15 minutes out of town through a bunch of farm land then there was an opening in the corn and one of the top race courses in all of Europe just appeared (It was like field of dreams only for paddle sports, maybe lake of dreams?). The course is all man made and a straight as can be, there is an island in the middle with cutouts so you can just paddle up on one side and go on to the race course on the other side (Augusta you would have loved it).

It is incredibly intimidating being at an Olympic race course that is just so gorgeous, and perfectly straight. Brittany and I had a mediocre practice, still trying to adjust to new people in the boat. The team had a great overall practice and when we came back to look at film it made us appreciate what we were doing so much more. We are now getting ready to go out and see all that Szeged has to offer, after those 15 minutes are up I think we will bond more with the team:)

Love,
Brittany and Grant

Day Two plus trip to Szeged

Hello Everyone!

We are on the bus headed to Szeged, Hungary as we speak!

We have 24 people on the bus, thankfully its air conditioned! We have roughly 110km to go, in our 6 speed bus, Grant is fascinated by that more than me :)

Yesterday was a blast! We went on a bike tour for 4 hours and we saw EVERYTHING! We have lots of great stories from all the fun places, our tour guide was really into funny stories and loved us laughing at all of them!

The first thing we did on our bike tour was go down the main street in Budapest Andrassy street. On the path there were 3 different promenade each one getting bigger as we went further and further out. The first one was the octagon which had 8 sides ;) The second one had the 4 most famous Hungarians (keeping with Hungarian tradition 3 warriors and 1 poet) The final promenade was the hero's square. There was a huge statue of the ark angel Gabriel, and the 8 best Hungarian leaders.

From there we went to the bath's where we were able to get a glass of fresh spring water. We then drove by the amusement park with the soviet era amusement park rides. Then the zoo which had natural animal habitats...the only problem was they were what the humans lived in where the animals were from.

The next part of our tour took us to the "house of terror" which was a museum of soviet era humanitarian crimes during soviet reign in the country. It was ironically enough located in the ex home of the KGB. Outside they had a monument for the iron curtain which was ironically an iron chain curtain that they hung. It was a very moving sight.

The last place on the Pest side of the was the only remaining Soviet monument (all the rest were torn down), and it was from 1945 when the soviets freed Hungary from the Nazi's in WWII. They have a fence up around it 24, 7 because they hate the Communist rule so much. Right across the street we saw the Parliament building which is the largest Parliament building on the continent. It was breath taking. It was on the Danu and absolutely mammoth. It was built for the world expo in Hungary in 1896.

The Buda side of the river was a shorter trip. We saw the 2 most prominent statues there. The first one was Lady Liberty, and was on top of the hill where they used to sit the soviet cannons so that they could shoot anywhere in the city.

The second was of St Gellert who was Killed by the Hungarians for trying to convert them to Christianity. They put him in a barrel and put nails on all the sides and rolled him down the hill. One of the miracles he performed was spilling blood on to a rock where he died and it was unable to be cleaned.

Once we finished up with the bike tour we headed to a great lunch at a restaurant called "M". It was recommended by our hostel director and it was a cute little place in the gardens of this huge building! We eat under the trees and had falafel balls, Hungarian Chicken Noodle soup and a delicious authentic chicken paprika dish with homemade gnocci. Such a great place and super cheap :)

We decided to head on home since it was a long walk and we actually ended up walking through the former Jewish ghetto, with many kosher restaurant and orthodox Jews walking around everywhere, and since it was Saturday we looked out of place since everyone was dressed for synagogue!

Once we hit the hostel we relaxed a little, had some down time and headed out for dinner around 5pm. We walked to a cute square that was surrounded with restaurant and we ended up at a place called Menza recommended by the hostel director. It was great, but it felt like it was Hungarian food trying to be American food! Grant had a beer and I tried their traditional white wine, it was so sweet it tasted like apple juice...not a huge fan but I had to try it! (Mrs. Harris thought you would find it shocking I even had wine!)

Following dinner I was craving a ice cream so we walked down this little alley and what did I find....a store called "SUGAR"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So of course I walked around the whole thing they even had cupcakes and maybe little desserts but i had to have a chocolate ice cream. I asked for sprinkles as a topping they started speaking Hungarian on me and some random girl comes over and i ask again for sprinkles no such luck. While I was paying they came over and said is this what you wanted and offered me chocolate syrup, it was good but obviously not rainbow sprinkles :)

We stopped at fun places on the way home and looked at a local Hungarian grocery store, it was pretty typical with the classic sections for all different foods, including a Mexican section :)

We crashed for the night and woke up this morning, headed out for some breakfast/lunch after having some Activia we found at the local food mart, you have to keep everything flowing :) We went to another place known for restaurants and decided upon the place with the most people. I got an iced coffee it was fantastic, with a scoop of ice cream, whipped cream and coffee! Right up my ally. We got some decent food, not my favorite meal but it was quick and fun!

We headed on back to the hostel, checked out, collected our bags and headed to Arnie's (another team mate) hotel. There were 10 teammates who met up there, we got on a bus, and drove about 20 minutes and ended up at a Shell station, random I know! We sat there for 20 minutes, had a Hungarian woman come onto the bus she told us we were waiting for 13 more people. We ended up picking up all the Blundetto's, Rich, Franzi and Jimmy!

We are now about 40km from Szeged, and super excited to get there, see the hotel and enjoy some down time with everyone!

Miss you all and love you all,
Brittany and Grant

P.S. We both are writing these e-mails, and I'm sure you can tell who wrote which parts! :)

Britt and Grant took a Bike Tour of Budapest this morning after a good nights sleep and a delicious breakfast. They just sent these pics -one is of the front of their hostel and the other is from their bike tour.

The pics to the right are of their room in the Hostel. They are eating lunch in a cafe getting ready to do more site seeing.

The rest of the Team arrives late tonight. The team will all travel together tomorrow to Szeged, the sight of the 2010 World Championships. Szeged is the third largest city in Hungary (population of 170,000) and it is where two rivers, the Tisza and the Maros merge.

Hi all,

So first things first, Brit and I are safe in Budapest no worse for the wear. We are very, very tired so if the email is funnier than it was supposed to be blame it on that.

We would like to thank Mrs. Monday for giving us a ride to the airport. There are a couple of nice pictures from it. We got onto the plane with no problems and plenty of time to spare. We then braced for our 8 hour flight.

The flight was good we watched 1 movie together and 1 movie on our own. We landed in Frankfort with about 1 hour of sleep under our belts. We stopped in Frankfort for 4 hours. While there we ate breakfast in this nice little cafe, and best of all we got to watch about 2 hours of the sprint canoe world championships in Posnan Poland. We then boarded our flight for Budapest, and Brittany had some new paper dolls to play with:) We then labored over the next 1.5 hours flight sleeping for about 45 min.

Then we landed in Budapest and our fun with public transportation arrived. We discovered how to take a bus from the airport to the red line, how to not buy tickets despite asking 3 people and getting change from 1 lady. We then asked a nice looking Serbian man which stop we were getting off at, he then pointed and said something something something hahaha.we said ok and got off at the stop we assumed he meant. It turned out to be the right stop, but we no couldn't find the right street. We had a nice Australian couple guide us back down into the station where another man gave us the right directions. We then arrived safely at our hostel, which all and all took a relatively short amount of time, considering we didn't speak the language and got turned around a couple times, and some how we didn't pay a dime for the public transportation (still trying to figure that one out.).

We got to the Hostel and it is amazing. First our room is about 800sq ft with a kitchen (with oven) bathroom, living room and loft for the beds. Our hostel director is about the nicest human being you'll ever meet, outside of Brittany of course. She told us 10 food and beverage places to try, the bike tour we are going on and the best food to eat, as well as all of the cool spots in town to check out. This place was such a cool find.

We then went out to dinner, the best place in town according to the hostel director and got everything she told us. It was amazing authentic ethnic Hungarian cuisine and a whopping $23 with tip. The first dish was 4 potato pancakes shredded and then fried with garlic sour cream sauce, then we had lemony rosemary chicken with jasmine rice and for dessert an amazing pancake with custard, cherries, pineapples, and apples inside sprinkled with 10x sugar and dark chocolate dipping sauce. Absolutely fantastic food, we are super excited to try the other restaurants she suggested knowing how good this one was!

After dinner we decided to head towards the Danu and watch the fireworks display for the Hungarian National Day, which ironically was today.

On the way Grant bought me a very pretty pink rose :).

After that we saw all this commotion in this one square so we went over to see what was happening and it was a group of deaf men drinking and signing and laughing so hard...pretty random! IT WAS PACKED and looked and felt just like our typical July 4th celebrations, with pretzels (they love carbs here) to balloons to carnival rides!

We wondered up to the bridge in hopes of see the fireworks go off but the later and later it got the more we decided to slowly walk home since we were extremely tired. Ironically enough as we are writing this e-mail we can hear the fireworks going off for almost 30 mins!

We decided to attach some pictures from the trip so far and we hope that tomorrow we will be taking a bike tour in the morning and site seeing in the afternoon with some great food of course.

Love you all,
Grant and Brittany

Dragon Boat World Championships here we come!

Four Days prior to their departure Brittany and Grant started an Anti-Jet Lag Diet given to them by their coaches. The first day they were to eat only Protein for Breakfast, regular lunch and then Carbohydrates for Dinner . . . here is the kicker for "I am addicted to 24 ounce Wawa Coffee Miss Brittany" . . . no coffee until 3 pm. She would go and buy it and keep it with her so that wherever she was at 3 pm on the dot it would be in reach! The second day was a fast day and they were to restrict calories. The third day was a repeat of day 1. The fourth day (the day of their flight) they were to restrict their calories. While on the flight they were to ask the stewardess to hold their Dinner and serve it to them for Breakfast. We were all fascinated that this is what athletes who compete all over the World must do so that they can train their bodies to be in the time zone and ready to compete when they land.

Brittany and Grant arrived at the Philadelphia Airport at 4:45pm on Thursday August 19, 2010, for a flight to Budapest, Hungary via Frankfort, Germany. Check out Britt's Barbie Suitcase!

They were dressed in their Team USA gear and grinning from ear to ear . . . so excited to start their 12 adventure! They checked in at the Luftansa check-in where Britt tried to get them bumped up to Business Class . . . "You know we are going to be bringing home the Gold Medal for the United States and we need our sleep." Not one to be deterred she tried again at the gate and then again while boarding. Good try Britt unfortunately it didn't work because the flight was completely booked. No empty seats.

The whole time leading up to their trip everyone was teasing Grant about how he was going to handle Britt for the long flight. Much to Britt's surprise Grant packed a "Goody" bag for her. Paper Dolls, Coloring Book, Crayons, Stickers etc.... Way to go Grant!!!! He was determined to keep her busy!

I received an email at 2:45 our time that they had landed in Germany safely. They were not able to get much sleep on the flight because it was so crowded and stuffy. Poor Grant . . . at 6' 7" I can only imagine how much he wanted to stretch out.

After a long layover in Germany they boarded their flight to Budapest which was a quick 1 1/2 hour flight.

Brittany and Grant arrived in Budapest Hungary at 9:00 am our time. Britt was so excited and said it looks like Lancaster County. They collected their luggage and headed to the Hostel.

They are not to sleep until tonight according to the diet.

The last I heard they were headed off to do a bike tour of Budapest!